Blog Post Archive

The Ostrich maintains: 1. Proper names have a (context dependent) sense. Context dependent, because ‘Mars’ can mean the god, or the planet, depending on context. BV: Agreed. 2. The object itself cannot be part of the sense, although the mainstream...

The Austrian philosopher and Vienna Circle member Herbert Feigl wrote about nomological danglers. Mental states as the epiphenomenalist conceives them have causes, but no effects. They are caused by physical states of the body and brain, but dangle nomologically in...

An outstanding essay by David Horowitz. I am tempted to reproduce the whole thing. I shall restrain myself. Three Pillars of Totalitarianism The totalitarian implications of this increasingly powerful ideological trend in the national culture have become pronounced enough to...

Suppose there occurs some horrendous incident of roadway carnage. Nobody says, 'We need traffic laws.' Nobody competent in English says that because it conversationally implies that there are no traffic laws. What a person might sensibly say is that we...

This from a reader: We are born with a natural inequality with soon turns into economic inequality. The reason it turns into economic inequality, I believe, is that humans have a natural desire for status. It is an essential part...

Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471) has some advice for you: If thou withdraw thyself from void speakings and idle circuits and from vanities and hearing of tidings thou shalt find time sufficient and convenient to have sweet meditations. (The Imitation of...

It [Communism] is not new. It is, in fact, man's second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: "Ye shall be as gods." It...

Robert Paul Wolff: Verbal aggression, speaking generally, is a good thing, especially as an alternative to physical aggression. The general rule about verbal aggression – satire, snark, ridicule, obscenity – is: punch up, not down. A rule is one thing,...

Way to go, liberals! You've done it again. You've driven up gun sales and shot yourself in the foot if you'll pardon the expression. You can talk about gun confiscation all you want, but it is not going to happen....

This is the eleventh entry in a series on David Benatar's The Human Predicament (Oxford UP, 2017). I have decided to skip ahead to Chapter 7, "Suicide," and leave Chapter 6, "Immortality," for later. This episode discusses pp. 163-172. We...

John Daniel Davidson: Here it must be said that the Second Amendment was not meant to safeguard the right to hunt deer or shoot clay pigeons, or even protect your home and family from an intruder. The right to bear...

Allegedly, Lawrence Krauss is a sexual predator. I'll leave it to you to decide which is worse, his philosophical incompetence or his sexual predation. Both are forms of seduction, one cerebral, the other carnal.

... than nero. (Is this racist code? A 'dog whistle'? Or is it just a bad pun consequent upon a deployment in an e-mail of the phrase, 'better late than never'?) Related articles 'Anglo-American' a 'Dog Whistle'? Dog...

Michelle Malkin: Two adult men, occupying lofty perches as law professors, argued this week that the voting age in the U.S. should be lowered to 16 because some high school survivors of the Parkland, Florida, shooting who want gun control...